Your checklist of what you want is always wrong.
In How Not to Die Alone, Logan Ury argues your "type" is more wall than compass. The things we actually want we never spot on a first swipe.
Ask someone what they want in a partner. Nine times out of ten you get a list: tall, ambitious, funny, sporty, educated, no kids, dog, non-smoker. Sounds reasonable. Sometimes even backed up with "I've learned that…"
The problem: that list was written by the version of you that got hurt yesterday, is a bit overwhelmed today, and picked up somewhere on TikTok that red flags are mostly about emotional availability. It's not a compass, it's a wall.
Logan Ury, behavioral researcher and dating coach, interviewed hundreds of singles for her book How Not to Die Alone. Her conclusion is maybe disappointing: almost nobody ends up with the person on their checklist. They end up with the person they had fun with once they actually showed up.
An interesting aside from that same research: filters about deep values (calm vs adventure, ambition vs balance, family vs independence) predict far more happiness than filters about the surface, like height or owning a dog. Not that a checklist is wrong, it just tends to say more about what you thought you needed yesterday than about who you'll actually click with.
One-line takeaway: write your list, then pretend you lost it. Give the people who "don't fit on paper" one real conversation. Nine out of ten times the wall was already there before they were.
Further reading: How Not to Die Alone, Logan Ury (2021). No referral link, we don't do affiliates.